


Blood on My Name

by DwarvesLikeShinyThings



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-28 02:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13893972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvesLikeShinyThings/pseuds/DwarvesLikeShinyThings
Summary: Frank Castle has disappeared. Hell’s Kitchen hasn’t heard from the Punisher in months. And Karen Page has moved on. Right?(Takes place post-Daredevil S2)





	1. Chapter 1

She doesn’t hear from him.

Days turn into weeks as late December in Hell’s Kitchen slides into a new year, and then the new year becomes spring with still no news of the Punisher.

Life settles back into a predictable rhythm— _she can’t remember the last time anything felt predictable_ —days at the Bulletin, sitting behind Ben’s desk, digging into leads with both hands as she tries, time and time again, to prove to herself— _to Ben_ —that she deserves to be there. Her nights are mostly spent at Josie’s, or sometimes at a fancy downtown bar closer to Foggy’s new office. On very rare occasions, Matt is there, too—but the three of them together doesn’t feel like it used to. Each of them carries something now—a heaviness that they’ve never had before. The awareness of it is thick in the air that surrounds them when they sit together at a corner table in Josie’s back room, but they never talk about it; just sip their drinks silently, resigned to the understanding that none of them know what to say to help each other.

Sleep doesn’t come easy—it never has, not since she shot Wesley—so she spends most nights on her computer, idly clicking through webpage after webpage, searching.

She checks news sites, police briefs, public records—scours every corner of the Internet she can think of, but for all her searching, she’s never been able to find a trace of the Punisher.

Maybe he’s fled the country. Maybe he’s lying low in the backwoods somewhere, with no one but his gun for company. Maybe he’s started a new life, somewhere far away. She isn’t sure that she wants to find him, anyway. Frank Castle was a bad man—she knows—and maybe it’s better for everyone if he just stays gone. But she can’t ignore the lurching, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach when she considers the possibility that _maybe he’s already dead._

It unsettles her, the thought that he could have died without her knowing. She somehow feels like she’s _owed _that— a notice of some kind, a sign that Frank has truly left the world, though she can’t quite say why. It wasn’t as though he’d meant anything to her, she assures herself, finally surrendering to tiredness and beginning to close the thousand open tabs on her web browser. But when she lays down and closes her eyes, drawing the covers up over her head, it’s Frank Castle’s sorrowful face she sees staring back at her…__

* * *

____

____

Something stirs her deep in the night. She wakes wordlessly, not moving—just listening. Far off in the distance, she hears the lone wail of a police siren echoing through the sleeping streets. A few more moments go by with no sound but the wind gently ruffling the blinds that cover her open window.

And then she hears it again.

It sounds as though something’s dragging along the wall outside, accompanied by heavy footfalls, slow and staggering. She reaches for the .380 at her bedside with one hand and her phone with the other. There’s a knock at the door—it’s almost drowned out completely by the pounding of her heart in her chest. With shaking fingers, she dials _9-1-1_. Her finger hovers over the “call” button, but she hesitates. She puts the phone down, sliding her long legs out of bed, gripping the gun with both hands now.

Another siren sounds in the distance as she steps silently toward the door. She can hear someone breathing on the other side—it’s a ragged, rasping sound, but it strikes her as being more pained than threatening. Glancing through the peephole, she can see only the top of his head, but it’s enough—she recognizes the military crew-cut instantly.

He can barely keep his balance as she yanks open the door, reaching out a mangled hand to steady himself against the doorframe. He looks like hell—his normally hulking form hunched over as he clutches at his stomach with one hand. He’s a sea of black and red, reeking of gunpowder and blood. She hears the liquid rattling in his chest as he draws in a shaky breath. When he lifts his head to look at her, she sees the apology in his eyes as his lips form her name.

_“Karen…”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank Castle has disappeared. Hell’s Kitchen hasn’t heard from the Punisher in months. And Karen Page has moved on. Right?
> 
> * * *

The .380 falls out of her hands and clatters to the floor as he stumbles forward, collapsing into her. She buckles instantly under his weight—he’s several inches taller than she is and twice as broad. They fall awkwardly together, but she manages to get her hands under his armpits, struggling with all her might to drag him out of the hall.

“ _Come on, Frank,_ ” she whispers urgently. He hasn’t exactly been quiet, stumbling like he had been down the hallway, and she has no way of knowing if he was followed by whoever did this to him.

A door slams several floors below, catalyzing her heart again and setting it to a new, more urgent rhythm than she ever thought possible. “ _Shit…_ ” she mutters, as her efforts to move him end with him falling like a dead weight only half inside her doorframe. “ _Shitshitshitshit._ ” Sheer adrenaline drives her kinetic faculties as she grasps at any part of him she can get her hands on, tugging desperately to move him the final few inches.

Incoherent groans sound from deep within his chest as she pulls him just far enough through the doorway to be able to close and bolt it behind her. As she presses her palms against the wooden door, she feels her legs wobbling uncontrollably and she sinks away, knocking her knees painfully against the rough hardwood floor as she lands.

For a moment, she is paralyzed. Heat surges up around her face, her neck, her ears; it suddenly feels as though the weight of the whole building has collapsed on top of her, like there’s not enough air in the room to breathe. Images swim up uncomfortably from the edges of her consciousness: sitting at a table in a dark room, smelling the smoke discharging from her gun as she watches Wesley’s body slump grotesquely in his chair; huddling in a jail cell in someone else’s clothes, staring in horror at Daniel Fisher’s blood still caked under her fingernails; kneeling on a grubby warehouse floor with her hands bound, waiting to die…

_HELP ME_ , she silently screams to no one, but it’s futile. This is life in Hell’s Kitchen—one impossible disaster after another, an endless maze of horrors with no way out. She’s one girl with one gun with six bullets inside against… _an army of Japanese ninjas? A drug cartel? The Russian mob?_   She lets out a hysterical laugh at the futility of it all.

If Frank was followed here, she knows they’re as good as dead. She draws in a breath, feeling it fill her chest and holding it in for several moments, as though it’s the last one she’ll ever have.

She can’t stop whatever might be outside that door. But she can do something to stop the man inside from bleeding out on her bedroom.

On hands and knees, she crawls over to him, leaning down, listening for his breathing. It’s shallower and uneven, but the sound gives her something to focus on.

“Frank?” she whispers, appalled at how child-like her voice sounds. “Can you hear me?”

His eyes shift, but don’t open. In the dim, yellowish light that pours in from the outside, it’s difficult to tell the open wounds from the existing bruises—Frank’s skin is marbled with dark-black splotches across his forehead, cheekbones and chin. She peels back his coat, feeling around as gently as she can—hardly daring to apply any pressure. The wettest part seems to be his lower abdomen, and it doesn’t take medical training for her to understand that he doesn’t have much time.

She doesn’t have a plan, but she knows she has to do something. Her fingers feel for the hem of his shirt— _maybe if she can tear it away, she can get a better look?_ —but suddenly he stirs, and she jerks away sharply as his eyes snap open, catching hers. She’s a deer in headlights—wide-eyed, heart-stopped, looking straight into something she can’t avoid now, something that’s going to hit her, whether she’s ready or not.

He coughs, blood spattering from his mouth as his face contorts in pain and she’s back again. She reaches out, gripping him by the shoulder—whether to steady him or herself, she’s unsure—and he opens his eyes again, struggling to speak.

“What is it?” she asks. “Frank, what’s going on?”

“W—whiskey,” he rasps.

She pulls back, brow furrowing, confused. “What?”

His eyes flick down to his stomach. “Bastards—s-shot me. The bullet…”

Understanding washes over her. “The bullet’s still in there. Oh shit— _shit!_ ”

“I need—” his breath hitches. “Tweezers. Alcohol. S-something to stitch with.”

She nods rapidly, scrambling to her feet, moving unsteadily into the kitchen. First aid supplies are under the sink… she knocks into bottles of bleach, a box of trashbags as she gropes blindly for her kit. There’s half a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some gauze pads— _nowhere near enough to deal with all that blood._ Tweezers are in the bathroom—she throws the switch on in haste, rummaging through her makeup bag until she finds what she’s looking for. As she turns to go, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. There’s blood on her cheek, on her neck— _his blood_ —slashing haphazardly across the pale white of her skin. A cold sweat breaks out as she realizes her face is a million times calmer than she feels. It disarms her—this stoic reflection, this mask of calm. She’s never been calm, she’s always been scared, but maybe— _maybe she can be the person staring back at her. Just this once._

She hears Frank grunting in pain from the other room, and the voice inside her screams: _go, go, go!_

He’s dragging himself across the floor, and she drops the items in her hand in favor of helping him. Swinging one of his massive arms around her shoulder, she puts her back into it—all her strength—half-lifting, half dragging him over to her bed. A cry tears involuntarily from him as they collapse.

“Shhhhhh!” she hisses frantically, eyes flitting to the open window before rushing over to hastily slam it shut, retrieving the supplies on the way back. “Were you followed?” she asks.

“N-no,” he grunts. “I killed those—those bastards.” There’s a ripping sound as Frank tries to tear at his black shirt, but his hands are trembling.

There’s barely a moment to feel relieved. “Here—let me,” she says, sitting down on the bed beside him, knocking his fingers aside, biting her lip and pulling the fabric apart with one motion. She hisses through her teeth as she pulls the shirt as gently as possible from the entry wound, the metallic stench of blood assaulting her nose. Grabbing a gauze pad, she presses it to the wound, taking his hand and helping him keep pressure on it.

“Sterilize the tweezers.” He rasps the instructions through gritted teeth. “And the needle.”

Sewing supplies… _nightstand drawer_. She rummages around clumsily until she finds what she’s looking for. Taking a gauze pad, she swabs the needle and tweezers with rubbing alcohol.

“’S good enough,” Frank says hastily. Setting the needle aside, she hands him the tweezers.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks.

“G-get me whiskey,” he says, pulling the gauze back and surveying the wound. “And s-something to bite down on. Go.”

Sending up a silent prayer of thanks to Ellison for the scotch that’s been sitting on top of her fridge since Christmas— _she’s always preferred Irish whiskey_ —she retrieves the bottle and a kitchen towel, twisting it into something he can hold between his teeth. Their eyes meet as he takes a pull from the bottle before stuffing the cloth in his mouth, and she can feel them both drawing in one last, unsteady breath before the plunge. She wishes there was something to say— _good luck, don’t die, maybe?_ —but her mouth has forgotten how to form the words, and Frank’s gaze is gone anyway, his focus now entirely on what he’s about to do.

Not five minutes ago, she’d been sleeping peacefully and now—now the Punisher was lying in her bed, bloodying her sheets, about to perform some insane, MacGyver surgery with her eyebrow tweezers and a sewing needle. Hysterical laughter bubbles and surges up from deep inside her; she clamps a hand over her mouth— _if she lets it start, she might not be able to stop_ —but the laugh dies as Frank digs into his skin, his body jerking grotesquely as he expels a sound that pierces her even through the gag in his mouth.

_Oh god,_ she thinks as her heart plummets through the floor. _This is happening._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Synopsis: Frank Castle has disappeared. Hell’s Kitchen hasn’t heard from the Punisher in months. And Karen Page has moved on. Right?
> 
> * * *

It doesn’t go well.

Frank’s hands are too shaky, and he’s coming at it from the wrong angle. Sitting beside him, she watches—helpless—as beads of sweat roll down his face, his breath coming in sharp, staccato puffs as he probes the open wound for the bullet. 

She feels so utterly  _useless;_ if she were Matt, she’d probably be praying right about now, but she doesn’t know any prayers _—_ and besides, she’s pretty sure the Catholics haven’t gotten around to designating a  _patron saint of the totally fucked._

With a frustrated grunt of pain, the tweezers fall from Frank’s hands, adding another misshapen splotch of blood to the myriad others dotting her white sheets. The towel drops from between his teeth as he half-coughs, half-groans, expelling air and curses all at once, head lolling back against the pillows. “I can’t—I can’t do it,” he confesses hoarsely, a hint of finality in his voice as his eyes slip closed.

“Frank!” she calls softly, shaking him by the shoulders.  _No, no, no, come on. Don’t do this to me._ She’s no medical expert, but she knows enough to understand that she has to keep him awake. She swats at his face, gently at first, and then again...decidedly less gently. He opens his eyes a crack. “Shit,” he croaks. 

_“Jesusfuckingchrist.”_ She doesn’t bother to try to conceal the relief in her voice. “Stay with me, okay?” It’s meant as a command, but comes out as a plea.

He forces his eyes the rest of the way open—having obviously heard the tremor in her voice—and tips his head ever so slightly toward her. She takes that as the closest thing to a nod he can manage. 

“What do I do?” She swallows deeply, trying to keep her composure. “Tell me what to do.”

She knows what the answer is, of course. There’s nothing else  _to_  do. He can’t reach the bullet, and they can’t just call an ambulance. If Frank Castle set foot inside Metro General, he’d be arrested again for sure, and that would be the end of it. 

Everything rests on her now. 

It’s an unspoken understanding that hangs in the air between them. She feels him press the tweezers into her shaking hands, and she’s shocked by how cold his fingers feel against her skin. 

Suddenly, the possibility of this man dying in her bed becomes all too real. A wave of nausea washes over her, not from the blood—she’s never been especially squeamish—but from the knowledge that Frank’s life is now completely in her hands, and if she fails…  _if she fails, he’ll–_  

“Stitch it up when—when you’re done,” he tells her through labored, uneven breaths. “Pack it with gauze. Tight.”

With a nod, she sets her jaw, trying to steady her grip on the tweezers in her right hand as she gingerly touches the skin around the bullet hole with her left. Her eyes flicker back up to his face as her fingers make contact. He gives her no words of reassurance, but his gaze is steady. A little glazed over, she notes, but steady. Trusting.

Just before she starts, she leans in close until the whole universe shrinks down to just him, her and a breath between them.  

“ _You’re not allowed to die here, do you understand?_ ”  


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank Castle has disappeared. Hell’s Kitchen hasn’t heard from the Punisher in months. And Karen Page has moved on. Right?
> 
> * * *

He passes out.

It takes only a few moments for it to happen, but when it does, she holds her composure as she feels his body go limp. The wound is just beneath his ribcage on his left side, and the hand she keeps on his chest can still feel his heartbeat. It’s weak, but it’s there and that reassures her—each pulse is an affirmative sign that she hasn’t killed him yet.

How long that would last, though, is questionable.

The most medical training she’s ever had was a first aid course back in college, and there had definitely  _not_  been a section on surgically removing bullets in your own bedroom with no anesthetic and a pair of tweezers. At first, she’s afraid to push them down too deep—worried that she’ll puncture something important. But as she slowly becomes accustomed to the feeling of human insides—or at least, as accustomed as she can ever  _hope to be_  to the feeling of human insides—she’s able to dig down deeper, until finally, she presses against something hard. Something metal. 

As she struggles to find a grip on the bullet, she’s annoyingly reminded of those awful “claw-hand” toy machines that you’d find at arcades or by the checkout lanes of the big box superstores back home in Vermont. When she was a kid, she’d always begged her mom for quarters to play, and—on the rare occasion her request was granted—had always ended up walking away with frustrated tears in her eyes as time after time, she failed to grab the toy she wanted.

Her patience hasn’t improved much since then.

Another futile attempt drags a cry of aggravation out through gritted teeth. Ready to throw in the towel though she is, she knows that quitting is not an option, so she goes in again— _come on, damn it, come on—_ and then…

_Gotcha!_

It’s all she can do to take her time, to extract it carefully, keeping her hand steady and pulling it out at the proper angle. It comes out with a sickening squelch and an additional gush of dark blood. She sets the bullet on her nightstand, reaching for gauze. 

“Halfway there,” she says aloud, her tone reassuring, even though she knows Frank can’t hear her. She stuffs as much of the filmy white cloth against Frank’s chest as she can. It soaks through almost instantly, but it’ll have to do until she’s ready to start stitching. She opens the tiny sewing kit her mother had sent with her when she first moved to New York (she’s never used it) and retrieves what she needs.

Poking the thin black thread through the eye of the sewing needle with bloody, shaking fingers proves to be an even greater test of will than her amateur attempt at surgery.

“For fuck’s  _sake!”_ she mutters as she misses,  _again._ She wants to cry, to scream, to give up, but she’ll be  _damned_ if she’s gone through everything she’s had to do tonight for Frank to die because she’s not dexterous enough to thread a  _fucking_ needle.

There’s no sense of triumph when she succeeds—she’s all urgency. She has absolutely no idea how to suture a wound properly, so she picks a point and starts, weaving back and forth in as even a pattern as she can manage. Bizarrely, she’s more put off by this than she was with digging around inside a body cavity, fishing for the bullet. Human flesh is rubbery and tough, and she hates the way her needle feels piercing through it with each pass she makes.

There isn’t much gauze left, so once she’s tied off her stitches, she grabs a pair of scissors from the kitchen and slashes strips of her sheets, doubling them up and pressing them over the now-sealed wound, securing the whole mess with thin strips of duct tape. She’s halfway through taping him up when she realizes how  _utterly foolish_ it looks.

A giggle escapes her… just one at first, and then another, and another, until they’re bubbling out of her in uncontrollable bursts. She can taste the hysteria, but she can’t stop. Everything about what’s happening is absurd— _the_   _Punisher of Hell’s Kitchen, lying unconscious in her bed, literally duct-taped together._ And she—she had patched him up and stitched him back together with  _a random assortment of household items._

Still laughing, she slips down to the floor, but not before grabbing the Scotch bottle from the nightstand and taking a long swig. It burns, and normally she would cough and sputter at the taste, but tonight, it’s different. 

Tonight, she saved a man’s life and she feels  _invincible._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank Castle has disappeared. Hell’s Kitchen hasn’t heard from the Punisher in months. And Karen Page has moved on. Right?
> 
> * * *

When he wakes, the first thing he sees is her.

She moves quietly through the apartment, tidying up the chaos of the previous evening, completely unaware that his unconsciousness has worn off. He doesn’t stir; when she turns his way, he closes his eyes quickly, feigning sleep before she has a chance to notice. He doesn’t want to disturb her, because he knows that the second he does, everything will become complicated.

He had told himself, time after time, that he had to stop, that he had to  _stay away from Karen Page,_ that she was too good a thing for him to deserve to be around—the only good thing in the  _world,_  as far as he can tell. He told himself that keeping his distance was the best way to keep her safe, the  _only_ way to keep her safe.

But none of that had stopped him from ending up on her doorstep last night. 

The truth was, for the first time in…  _a very long time—_ he doesn’t let his mind even finish the thought—he had felt afraid. Afraid to die alone, somewhere in the backstreets of Hell’s Kitchen, nameless and forgotten. All he’d wanted was for someone to  _know_ ; not to  _care,_ necessarily—he doesn’t deserve that much and he knows it—but just to  _witness._

He had been so sure that he  _would_ die, after all—that was the only reason he’d had the guts to even seek her out in the first place. As he’d struggled to climb her stairwell, grasping at the gushing wound at his side, he could feel his body counting down the minutes until he was released from the crushing weight of being Frank Castle, the Punisher. But then she’d opened her door… then he’d  _seen her._ And at that moment, when her wide blue eyes had latched onto his, he’d decided that dying didn’t seem like such a great idea after all. For the first time since…  _that day…_ he’d felt as though there was something to live for.

And live he had, it seems—at least for now.

He isn’t quite sure what do, so he settles on watching Karen through half-lidded eyes as she flits back and forth across the apartment, internally grinning at the way her height somehow manages to make her movements graceful and awkward at the same time, and admiring the way the early morning sunlight seems to glint off of her golden hair…

She’s a wonder, this willowy wisp of a girl that had saved him. He can remember their first meeting in the hospital as though it was yesterday—their first  _proper_ meeting, he corrects himself, not the time he’d been rampaging through the halls of Metro General looking for that bastard Grotto.

Everything had been so horribly black, lying there restrained in the hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, tortured by the memories that Red had drawn out of him. And then she… she had stepped out of the darkness like an angel of mercy and illuminated the whole world around him. She had treated him like a human being, had looked past the sharp edges, the sins, the scars, and she had  _seen_ him—the real him. The father. The husband. The soldier. And he’d been so stunned by it that he’d folded like a damn cheap lawn chair the moment they were alone together, spilling out things he’d never shared with anyone, not since that awful day at the carousel.

It was so  _natural,_ talking to her. 

If he’s honest with himself, he wants nothing more than to just talk to her—all day, if he were to have his way about it.

It suddenly dawns on him that he’s wasting time—she’s here now, and while she might chuck him right out the front door as soon as he’s able to stand, she’s  _here_ now, and so is he. 

She wanders into the kitchen, and he decides it’s time. Clenching his teeth against the pain that shoots out from his abdomen, he sits up as quietly as he can as she runs the tap in the sink, waiting until she’s about to turn around…

“Morning, sunshine,” he croons, his voice rough and low, laden with the lingering effects of sleep.

“Jesus fucking  _Christ—_ Frank!” Her hand flies to her chest in surprise, her voice high and breathless as she nearly drops the glass of water she’s carrying. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. “Figured it might be better to, uh, spring it on you, you know?”

“Well that does seem to be your specialty.” 

There’s a hard edge to her voice, and he straightens up, losing the playfulness instantly. “I’m sorry.” (He makes sure there’s no mistaking the sincerity this time.)

She exhales deeply in exasperation, crossing the room and handing him the glass of water. “Drink this,” she commands. “You’re probably dehydrated.”

Their fingers brush as he takes the glass from her, and he tries desperately to catch her eye, but she’s taking care to avoid his gaze, her hair falling across her face like a shield between them as she bends down to clear some things off of her nightstand. He drinks the water slowly, waiting for her to speak.

She doesn’t—just comes over when he’s done, holding out her hand to take the empty glass away.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, feeling a sad sinking in his chest. He’s ruined it—he’s ruined everything.  _Not that he expected to anything_ other  _than to ruin everything._ Still, the realization leaves him hollow.

She hesitates at his bedside. “Is it ma’am again?” she asks softly, with a brittle smile, twisting the glass contemplatively in her hand, keeping her eyes on it as she circles the rim with her fingertips. Then, without warning, she looks up, and his heart skips about six beats as he recognizes the familiar warmth returning to her eyes. “I’ve spent the last three hours cleaning your blood off my floor, Frank,” she says. “I think you can call me Karen.”


End file.
